Will the Sherrod and ACORN affairs finally help the Dems get a pair?

By LAURIE ESSIG

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Everyone now knows that Department of Agriculture employee Sheryl Sherrod was unjustly forced to resign and vilified as a “reverse racist” by the Obama Administration and even the NAACP. Ms. Sherrod, who is Black, was filmed giving a speech at an NAACP banquet in March where she recounted how her work with a poor white farmer taught her to care about the have-nots of this country, regardless of race. This speech was then edited into a version that looked as if Sherrod was saying she discriminated against this farmer because he was white.

And who ran this highly edited and completely untrue version? None other than Andrew Breitbart and our friends at Big Government. The same lovely people who created the total lie that ACORN was not an anti-poverty group, but rather a human trafficking ring! And the result was what? Oh yeah, the defunding of ACORN by Congress, the vilification of the organization in the mainstream media, and the long lasting lesson on the part of the far-right that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are so easily scared into submission that all it takes is some bad video and some ridiculous lies to get them to comply.

Over at Big Government, they’re not even apologizing for the “mistake” they made with the video. Instead, they’re saying there is all sorts of proof that the NAACP encourages racism and that the mainstream media is ignoring it. And although the Department of Agriculture has apologized to Sherrod as has the head of the NAACP, I don’t hear the mainstream media that ran with this story- AGAIN- even after they realized the ACORN story was highly orchestrated propaganda- apologizing?

Although CNN and the Atlanta Constitution Journal correctly reported that the video was a misrepresentation of the full speech, Fox News and the right-wing GOP noise machine started the drum beat and the Dems did what they always do- they caved. According to Yosi Sergant, it is time for Obama and the Dems to “grow a pair.” Sergant would know what it’s like to be thrown under the bus by the Dems and this administration, since he himself was also misrepresented by Breitbart of Big Government when Breitbart misrepresented his work as trying to use the National Endowment for the Arts to support the Obama Administration.

Let’s pretend that the Dems are actually capable of learning from their past mistakes (no evidence yet) and say they do learn to “grow a pair” or perhaps more accurately and less sexist- get a spine- and begin to stand up to the absolute hate and propaganda that is Big Government, Fox “News,” and the rest of the noise machine. It could involve not just funding good organizations like ACORN and holding onto good employees like Sherrod, but perhaps even not caving on Afghanistan, Iraq, Gitmo, Iran, healthcare, financial reform and whatever other disasters the right seems intent on getting us into.

Now that would be worth the pain of living with this spinelessness. To find that the Dems actually can find their spine and stand up to the ballsy nut jobs over at Big Government and Fox News.

Yeah, it’s kinda scary over there- when they reprinted my stuff on the ACORN scandal they created, I and some of the people I work for ended up with all sorts of threats- including shooting me first after their revolution.

I have survived two bomb threats [including one from Canada (????)], threats sent to my office in DC against the President (Clinton) and lotsa bad press. Loudmouths are frequently too liquored up to remember whom they threatened the night before in my humble opinion. That is of course before US Congress members reminded them daily and stoked their ignorant anger. Things are worse now, no doubt.
Yet again your precise and talented use of my native language impresses me. This first paragraph is the best short description of a rather simple big lie that I have read. Analysts tend to make it more complicated than it really was: simply somtimes to prove their punditry.
It is indeed shameful to have an administration that fires a woman with an exemplar message of tolerance, cooperation and constructive community spirit, for sure. They (the administration) are starting to look like unreconstructed amd raw PTSD survivors, jumping out of their skins at the slightest of provocations. It is no longer excusable or acceptable. How can the Office of the President of the US be scared of lying-sack-of- poop politicians and jerks? How did we get here?

I wouldn’t bet on this Administration or the DNC using this incident as a rallying cry. They have repeatedly missed opportunities to do the right thing–sorry; “missed” sounds like it’s inadvertent, and I really believe it’s calculated. Check out Frank Rich’s editorial in the Times today. I think his analysis is right on the money.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25rich.html?ref=opinion

About Me

I'm an academic who does not believe in abstract knowledge. Like Marx, I think the point isn't just to describe the world, but to change it. Unlike Marx I don't have Engels sending me my monthly rent. So I have a day job teaching sociology at Middlebury College. In my real life, I'm a fighter (taekwondo) and a writer

(Salon, Legal Affairs, NPR's "All Things Considered") and now this blog. My second book, American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Spirit of Our Time, is a critique of neoliberal capitalism through cosmetic surgery. American Plastic will be published by Beacon in 2010.